Main menu

Learning More About Corporate Branding Strategy

The principal goal of corporate branding is to ensure that both a company and the products and services that it offers stand out above the competition. Corporate branding strategies are developed with this goal in mind. Competition in the business world is fierce and both achieving and maintaining reputation, presence, production, and capabilities requires a substantial amount of revenue.

A corporate branding strategy seeks to create a unique identity, presence, and position for products, services, and companies. Most importantly, a strong brand both builds and maintains brand and product recognition in the minds of consumers. A corporate brand is also the strategy of a business, what the corporation is currently doing, and what it hops to achieve, which incorporates the personality, values, vision, and other aspects of the business.

Disney, for example, has a very different brand feel than Nike does. We know that Disney stands for family entertainment, classic animation, Walt Disney World, Mickey Mouse, etc. Nike, on the other hand, stands for high performance athletic shoes. Both Disney and Nike use product placement to reinforce their brand image and bolster their corporate branding strategies.

When you purchase pudding cups for your children’s lunches that feature Disney characters on the package, you subconsciously associate Disney with products intended for children. If you are participating in a walkathon and someone hands you a water bottle with the Nike Swoosh logo on it, you subconsciously associate Nike with athleticism. By simply including the name of a company in a product, brand recognition can be achieved. That pudding in the Disney example was Disney chocolate pudding, and the water bottle in the Nike example, is now a Nike water bottle by virtue of the addition of the logo.

As a company grows and expands its product base, brand synchronization also becomes necessary. A clothing company, for example, may have clothing lines for men, women, and children, and may employ slightly different marketing and corporate branding strategies to target these different demographics. A basic, underlying branding strategy is needed to tie these three separate types of products together. The Gap, for example, has an underlying brand of casual, stylish, comfortable clothing. Retailers like Target and Wal-Mart have branded themselves as purveyors of affordable clothing for the entire family.

Developing a corporate brand strategy takes time and research, but the result is a tightly focused dynamic brand, are well worth it. No business can expect to succeed in today’s competitive market without first defining what both themselves and their products stand for and how they differentiate from the competition.